The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1887-04-29
SHOP GIRLS HOTEL.
How WOrkingwomen.s Home Was
Established in New York.

| dates shop girls. 1t keeps roof over the
heads of some seventy inmates, and it
never asks the workingwoman to barter
her Independence for home. y sturdy,
brown-haired American girl of % or there
abouts has been the head and front OF the
undertaking from the start, and the other
! day she gave me an outline of the scheme.
| ''There are three of us she said. ''and
! we came to the city together a couple Of
years ago Father left us 500 apiece and
| beyond that we each had two hands and
nothing more. We had no trade: nobody
at home had ever thought of our needing
one, and we were unused to work of any
kind. We drifted into the shops. of
course. Every girl with one good gown
and who knows how to comb her hair does
that in the city to-day
II earned s. a week and the others had
81 a week at the start and we lived like
some thousands more That means a top
floor bed room. a gas jet, a tin pail,
| bakers bread and tea We had to have
car fare, we had to have clothes and the
bread and butter had to shift for them
| selves
Just when she began TO think of other
possibilities, this energetic piece of fem
mime humanity told me she did not know.
| 4 scheme had been in her mind almost
| from the start II was sure. as soon as
| the idea came to me, she said, that if
could once find the right sort of house, in
the right part of tue city, and manage the
housekeeping as eleYerly and carefully as
they do back in the country, | could con-
| trive decent sort Of home living for my
sisters, for myself and for good many wo-
men beside, at rates that shop girls can af-
| ford to pay.
''The difficulty was about risking -FOUR
| little capital. Itdidn't earn much for us
| in the savings bank, but ii was all We had,
you know, and we had never touched a
penny of it, no matter how shabby We
went or how hungry We grew. was be-
| hind the handkerchief counter and one of
my sisters sold stockings and the other
buttons in one of the biggest of the New
/ York stores There were 700 women
about the establishment. and we talked
| the matter up mornings and nights with
every one that Wi. knew. There was lit
erary society that met every week and We
brought it up there, and i'll two or three of
the girls social clubs beside. There were
plenty of girls who lived at home with
their parents, but we found fifty or more
who jumped at the chance we offered them
and were continually urging us to go ahead
with the scheme. Finally We began house
hunting, not Il sure whether we meant to
take place. or even il we found one to
! suit us or not. We were staggered by the
city rents as matter of course, and more
! than once gave up the whole plan in de-
SPAR. We felt like trio of gamblers, and
not at all like the confident business wo-
men we had been at the outset, when We
finally paid down the first month rent for
| this house Of ours just four months ago.
We had staked our all on a desperate
chance, and the longer We looked at it the
more certain appeared the prospect of our
! loss.
1T was a woman of whom we hired the
place, and she put the figures as low as
she could afford, and promised us consid-
Grafton in any difficulty so long as there
| seemed a chance of our final success. There
wasn't money enough left to furnish very
extensively. but we got together the need
| fuls for the kitchen and the dining room
and put up as many beds ac our last linger-
! ing dollars would buy. The girls who had
promised to board nth MS were eager to
come. and most of them had women 5
/ xniekknacks Of one sort or another-tables
or chairs or pictures or bits of fancy work
that frightened up the bare place won-
derfully and made il look from the first
week almost like q home. 1t was be-
| cause it felt like a home that we did not
! fail. There were fifty OF us the day the
/ house opened, and the dining room and the
big sitting room and the hallway opened
running over with flock of delighted
/ children. TO have house TO themselves
where they could do as they pleased was
/ a luxury that went 70 their heads. They
/ ran up stairs and down stairs, and the
I homlier nook or corner was the better
| they liked It, 1t was camping out
lrolic, and picnics were rare enough with
/ them ALL They laughed because | forgot
towels in ordering the linen, and they
/ laughed when the milkman went by with
out leaving the milk. They sat up till
past midnight sewing the long seams of
/ the sheets They unpaeked their trunks
and settled the furniture and hustled about
/ in that first week Of confusion, in the firm
/ conviction that the whole experiment was
I the most delightful of jokes that had ever
exploded in their prosaie lives.
Nothing discouraged them and nothing
/ daunted them. No matter what went
wrong they Were determined TO ne pleased
and to find in every mishap only the ma
terial for jest. put the board as low
as | dared after had calculated the rent
and the coal, the gas and the table bills.
| left the store, of course, and my sisters